TorrentFreak published 688 articles during the last year, a record for us. We'd like to end 2008 with our latest chart which uniquely, is determined by you, our readers. Additionally, our three regular writers reveal their personal favorites from an eventful year.

Opentracker, the BitTorrent tracker software utilized by The Pirate Bay, is released under a beerware license, meaning that anyone who uses it and meets the developer should buy him or her a beer. To fulfill the license, the German Pirate Party donated 50 liters of beer to the main developer…

In November, the Spanish government launched a media campaign which heavily criticized file-sharers. Now, Spain's Association of Internet Users has issued a complaint, claiming the content "recklessly offers information that lacks all legal basis, with the exclusive aim of re-educating public opinion." Sounds familiar.

2008 will be remembered as the year when BitTorrent went mainstream, with an increasing number of artists discovering that it is an excellent tool to promote music. Today, in a sign of the times, Open Your Eyes Records and the popular music tracker What.cd have announced an exclusive partnership.

BitTorrent and porn go hand in hand, so to speak. When Bram Cohen, the inventor of the protocol wanted to test his application in the wild, he used adult content to do so. In the years that followed, many BitTorrent sites specializing in adult content gained millions of visitors, but…

While "Disaster Movie" appears in all the worst films lists of 2008, it is leading the top 10 of most downloaded movies on BitTorrent this week. Let's hope this says more about the popularity of aXXo than the overall taste of movie pirates.

With millions of potential targets, BitTorrent sites are a great arena for scammers and spammers. Vertor is a new BitTorrent site that aims to eliminate these threats. Every torrent on the site is checked for viruses, DRM and password protected archives by Vertor's software, and users are able to preview…